Millions of copies of this book have been sold. Written by Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo started off as a sensation across Europe and has now moved on to be a national bestseller in the United States as well. It is a combination of a murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It kept me itching for more as I breezed through the pages, and I never wanted to put it down.
How does the plot go? Well, the story exists due to the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, forty years ago. Her uncle, Henrik Vanger, believed that there was something behind this disappearance, so he hired Mikael Blomkvist to investigate the case. A middle-aged journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm. Vanger convinced Blomkvist to take the case under the conditions that Blomkvist would help his financially strapped magazine, and he promises to give him information to prove Wennerström is corrupt. The cover that the Mikael uses when researching this murder is that he is spending a year writing the Vanger family history.
He then is aided, via coincidence, by Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker who possesses of the wisdom of someone twice her age. Though at first it seems as though Mikael is the main character, as the story grows, readers come to realize that real main character of the story is Lisbeth Salander. As they investigate the disappearance the two find astonishing pieces of information about the family, they as the hunters become hunted, and also an unexpected connection between themselves.
USA Today has said that the book is “mesmerizing” while Fresh Air (NPR) has said that it is “A super-smart amalgam of the corporate corruption tale, legal thriller and dysfunctional family psychological suspense story.” Others, like the Boston Globe, say that it is “exceptional…meticulously plotted, beautifully paced, and features a cast of two indelible sleuths and many juicy suspects.” It was an amazing book, and I cannot wait to begin reading the second of the series– The Girl Who Played With Fire.
